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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
German children will be forced to see concentration camp sites,
From The Times, January 8, 2009 (see sig)
German children will be obliged to visit the site of a Nazi concentration camp as part of their regular school curriculum. The move — to be introduced in Bavaria and likely to become the norm throughout the country — is in response to the almost fatal stabbing of a senior police officer by a neo-Nazi.
"We have to take a stand against this far-right octopus, this tentacled monster," said Host Seehofer, the prime minister of Bavaria, who has ordered every ministry to come up with proposals to stamp out neo-Nazi influence in southern Germany. They will feed into a comprehensive action plan to be unveiled next week.
"The first thing we have to do is set up a website that will give a point of contact to everyone who has problems with far-right extremists," Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minster, said. "Our aim must be to bring up kids so that they can resist any attempt by the far-Right to lead them astray."
In the Bavarian case this will mean a compulsory visit to a concentration camp — usually Dachau, outside Munich — or former offshoots of camps where slave labourers were forced to work for the German war effort. History lessons will also include excursions to centres that document Nazi crimes such as the one that has been set up near Hitler's Alpine refuge on the Obersalzberg.
The German educational system is organised on federal lines and some regions already take high school students to former camps. The Holocaust is taught in every senior school during history lessons and in civic studies. Some religion teachers also draw on the moral choices faced or neglected during the Third Reich. The curriculum of North Rhine Westphalia — where camp excursions are already common practice — stipulates that teachers must emphasise the Holocaust from the perspective of the victim.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5468635.ece?print=yes&randnum=1231388160869
I wonder, Glenn, if your focus on it (I haven't kept exact count, but I think more than half of your posts over the last couple weeks have been dedicated to the issue) doesn't in some ways detract from the (to my mind, much more central to America's present and future) questions of torture and its ilk that you've been considering in other recent posts.
I actually see them as quite related. As long as the U.S. continues to insinuate itself into Middle East wars, it's going to face the kind of political pressures that have led it to things like torture, spy on its own citizens, vest the President with virtually unlimited power in the name of keeping us safe, etc.
There's simply no way to continue to tie ourselves inextricably to all of Israel's various conflicts and act so loyally to it and, at the same time, de-militarize our political culture.
Having said that, I don't think there's much to the "distraction" theory. Most bloggers -- indeed, most political writers -- focus on many issues at once. I've always written about U.S. policy towards Israel since I began blogging and don't see why it should distract from other issues I write about. It may be that some people who are likely supportive of my writing on those civil liberties issues may be alienated by my writing on Israel, but the principal reason I don't want to be a politician is because I don't want to refrain from writing about what I think is important out of fear that some people might not agree.
Hamas baited Israel to start this war by lobbing missiles into Israeli towns killing 4 citizens. Israel is taking the bait and the chips will fall where they will. Probably 1500 people will die of which 500 will be children before all this ends at exactly 12:00PM EST Jan 20. Hamas is quite ecstatic that it sacrificed 1500 of its citizens to achieve a "ceasefire", which it had in-place 30 days ago and let it expire. This whole thing is surreal yet the worldwide media, including Glenn, refuses to call Hamas what they are: a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel by any means necessary including the cynical manipulation of the leftward drift of the mainstream media.
Glenn is more than happy to carry the water for Hamas.
'after finally being allowed into Gaza, of starving Palestinian children laying next to corpses, with ambulances blocked for days by the IDF.'
This sort of thing has been documented in every Israeli offensive. It would be surprising if it did not, since the nature of the Israeli offensives trap families in their homes, while preventing aid workers from reaching shelled and bombed homes. Families have had to stay in their homes, despite the fact that dead relatives occupy other rooms, in order to save their own lives. I'm sure most wars and invasions are no different, but its important to know this part. I heard a pro-Israeli propaganda device claim that Israel deserved a "medal' for its conduct in the territories. The most surprising thing was that the host took up the question seriously, and posed it again to another guest.
"Long-time Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller, in Newsweek, earlier this week made one of the most startling revelations in some time -- that in all the time the U.S. has supposedly been attempting to forge a Middle East peace agreement over the past 25 years, it never once, in any meaningful way, raised with Israeli leaders the damage that comes from Israeli settlements."
Before the Oslo type negotiations, George Bush famously withheld millions of dollars in loan guarantees linked to settlement construction in order to cost Likud the election. Its a clear picture of what can be done when politicians move forcefully to use their support of Israel to garner changes in leadership or policy with our "eternal" friend. Yitzahk Shamir, the hawkish Likud candidate who refused to honor the US's request for at least the illusion of an ease in settlement building, lost the election. Its clear that it was the fact that the funding was cut over an issue most Israelis are at best ambivalent about--and the accompanying image of a prime minister unable to control American support--that did it. If some leader or house or senate block could muster up the same kind of strategy for a long enough time, Israel would quickly come to terms with its need to come to terms. There is no danger in acting against Israel's rejectionism, it is merely more convenient to play Israel's game.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
